It refers to a Wall Street Journal article and a statistical analysis having to do with the pairs event, and the random selection of judges whose scores "count."

I am not a WSJ subscriber, so could not read the whole article. But I would sure be interested your take Mathman, if you can access the article and if this post is not outside of GS rules.

ETA: While I found this topic interesting, I'm not all about "what ifs." Even if ALL judges scores counted, the debate could move to "what if different judges had been selected" etc. So I while I find this interesting, it doesn't fall into the "wuzrobbed" category at all for me.

Hey, I can't log on to FSU. The administrator has disabled my account, or else I "don't have sufficient priviledges to access this forum." Boo. Calling Sharpie -- can you help me out? (Login name "mathman").

I'll see if I can find the article on my own. For sure, though, statistical analysis of this sort cannot support wuzrobbin, since all that is required for a fair contest is that the same rules apply to all competitors without favoritism.

You could just as well poll all the other judges in the ISU pool who were not selected to be the 12 sitting judges what they thought, and work up some statistics from that.

However, the random draw is a public relations disaster for the ISU, precisely because it invites this kind of article. Why would the ISU deliberately court this kind of criticism? They have enough of a credibility problem as it is.

Link to WSJ...

Like I said, the "what if" possibilities are endless. This just caught my eye as one of those "I wonder what MM would say?" things.....since this seems to be up your alley. HEY - we have to have SOMETHING to do while we wait for the Men's LP, right??